There was plenty of banging in the Love’s RV Stop 250 at Talladega Superspeedway, which brought out eight cautions, one shy of the track record in the series.

After the race, the banging continued in the garage area, only with flesh and not sheet metal.

Shortly after Brett Moffitt took the checkered flag, Matt Crafton, at 47 one of the elder statesmen of the series, took what many called a cheap shot at Nick Sanchez, leaving the 22-year-old Floridian with a bloodied face.

“I was walking back to the hauler, got a tap on the back and then got punched in the face,” Sanchez told a gaggle of media members after leaving the Infield Care Center to address his wounds.

After the punch, the two were quickly separated. NASCAR said it was reviewing the incident and, per typical processes, would issue findings and any subsequent penalties later next week.

The ire that led to the post-race violence was a result of a late, multi-car wreck on lap 92. The two were battling for the same space when they made contact and started a chain reaction that collected easily a third of the field.

The incident overshadowed the feel-good story of Brett Moffitt’s win.

In a spot start while running in the Xfinity Series, the 2015 Cup Series Rookie of the Year used his wisdom, experience and patience against the field of mostly 20-somethings to pull out the victory.

“I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better at superspeedways,” Moffitt said. “… studying film. It’s that and the spotter when we come to these places.”

It was that film study, Moffitt said, that gave him the insight to not to stay on the bottom, watching a driver lose the win last year hanging out on the lower line. Ben Rhodes finished second and Dean Thompson was third.

In a fitting metaphor for his racing career, Fairhope’s Grant Enfinger, a fellow 30-something like Moffitt, used persistence and patience to keep his shot at a spot in the championship four alive.

The Fairhope native was involved in a wreck early, taking damage the left side of his No. 23 Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet. With a little banging on the dents and duct tape, he returned to the track and worked his way back onto the lead lap, but not before being involved in another accident where he didn’t add to his damage.

With a less aerodynamic front end, Enfinger battled to walk away with a 13th-place finish, leaving him three points below the cutoff line as the series heads to Homestead-Miami Speedway on Oct. 21.

“We didn’t have the speed we needed in our Champion Power Equipment Chevy today,” he said. “It wasn’t for a lack of effort though. These GMS guys have given me a great truck at a lot of these races, but we just missed something here today.

“… Thank you to these GMS guys for fighting. I think a lot of these guys would’ve called it quits and I don’t know how many times we were on the D.V.P. clock but this thing is tore up from every angle. Thirteen is almost like a win.”